Scouts are on the right path

Sunday

Jun 2, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The Boy Scouts of America should be commended for voting to allow openly gay youths to participate in Scouting. The BSA should have gone further by allowing openly gay Scout leaders. But a partial recognition of reality is better than the policy that had discriminated for decades against gay youth.

The Boy Scouts of America should be commended for voting to allow openly gay youths to participate in Scouting. The BSA should have gone further by allowing openly gay Scout leaders. But a partial recognition of reality is better than the policy that had discriminated for decades against gay youth.

Several religious denominations, including the Assemblies of God and the Southern Baptists, have decried the BSA's move and threatened to sever their connection. The threats resound because thousands of troops — 70 percent overall across the country — are sponsored by churches. Still, the BSA's decision enjoys the support of the Mormon church, the nation's biggest sponsor of troops. And officials of the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest troop sponsor, say they will spend time before Jan. 1, when the new policy takes effect, to determine whether or how the change might affect its churches.

Close to 1,400 voting members of the BSA's National Council cast ballots earlier this month on the measure, with 61 percent supporting the Executive Committee's proposal to admit openly gay Scouts. "While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting," the organization said after announcing the results.

That didn't stop conservative religious groups from making dire predictions and finger-wagging about how homosexual behavior is incompatible with their religious principles. But Scouting isn't about sexual behavior. It's about character development, leadership training and community service. When they announced their decision to end discrimination against gay Scouts, Scouting officials also stressed that they will not condone sexual behavior by any Scout, whether gay or straight. They should have extended lifting the ban on leaders, too, noting that sexual contact between Scouts and leaders is inappropriate whether heterosexual or homosexual, and that there's no scientific basis for claiming that homosexual men are more likely than heterosexual men to molest children.

Maybe the religious groups are right in predicting a mass exodus of Scouts and sponsors. Yet most parents of young Scouts and young Scouts themselves opposed the gay ban in a recent BSA survey, indicating that anti-gay policies may become generational relics.

In any case, on principle, ban supporters are wrong. A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that homosexuality is a biological characteristic rather than a personal "choice," so accusing gays of immorality is akin to discriminating against people in any other minority.

Well, religions are about faith, not science. One can only hope that, over time, all faith groups' commonly held teachings of kindness and fairness will recognize that opening the Scouts to all regardless of sexual orientation is simply the right thing to do.